Cities of Uzbekistan

• Tashkent city
• Andijan town
• Bukhara town
• Djizak town
• Fergana town
• Gulistan town
• Karshi town
• Khiva town
• Namangan town
• Navoi town
• Nukus town
• Samarkand town
• Shakhrizabs town
• Termez town
• Urgench town

Tashkent city

The capital of Uzbekistan is the biggest, most modern, most cosmopolitan city in Central Asia. People have been living here, where the western tip of the Tien-Shan pans out into the Kizyl-Kum desert, for two thousand years – though there is not much to show for this history.
In April 1966, Tashkent was shaken by a major earthquake. Another quake struck in May, and in the two years that followed a further 800 earth tremors left the city virtually leveled. The big ones hit the city from directly underneath, paradoxically saving some buildings by marking them bounce rather than topple sideways. The rebuilding of the city by architects and 30000 volunteers from all over the Soviet Union passed quickly: The whole country helped to build a new Tashkent. Now it is considered by right one of the most beautiful cities…
There has been a settlement at the Tashkent oasis on the Chirchik River since the I century AD, though it was called Charch or Shash or Dzhadzh until the VIII. It was called Binkent in the VIII and VIII centuries and Tashkent meaning stone village, from the XI. By then it had passed from Samanaid to Karakhanid control and early in the XIII century it was taken by Mohammad Ala-al-din, Shah of Khorezm, who, fearing it might become a rival centre of power destroyed it in 1214. Genghis Khan, Tamerlane and Bukhara's khans and emirs ruled Tashkent from their more famous oases from the XIII century until 1809 when it became part of the Khanate of Kokand.
Early in 1865 word reached St Petersburg that Emir Muzaffar al-Din of Bukhara had plans to re-take Tashkent from Kokand. Prince Gorchakov the Russian Foreign Minister urged restraint on General Cherniaev, his commander in the field; Tashkent should be encouraged to break from Kokand by itself and then offered Russian protection from its neighbors. To take it by force would jeopardize relations with a suspicious British India.
But Cherniaev believed the town was within his grasp and wanted to make a present of it to the czar. When orders came not to attack he deliberately left them unopened.
With 1300 men and 12 cannon against a defending force of 30000 he moved up to the city walls on the night of 14 June. Gun carriage wheels were wrapped in felt for maximum stealth. Scaling ladders were in position by 2.30 am on the XV. When they struck at dawn, first with a decoy attack the Russians surprise was complete. Fierce fighting continued all day and part of the next, but the city elders gave in on the XVII when they saw that the alternative was to see Tashkent reduced to ash and rubble.
This aim was not convincingly achieved. Part of Russian imperial policy was to ignore Islam, so that most of Tashkent's Muslims felt increasingly ignored them selves. The situation was not helped by the total separation of Russian and old Tashkent.
The former existed for the army; in its early years, in Curzon's view the refuge of damaged reputations and shattered fortunes, whose only hope of recovery lay in the chances afforded on the battlefield.. The latter was an overcrowded and unsanitary maze of dried mud streets. When cholera took hold of it in 1892 the Muslim leaders forbad examination of Muslim women by Russian doctors and resisted burial of the dead in a new cemetery outside the city.

Historical and architectural monuments of Tashkent

     Tashkent - is one of the most biggest ancient city in Central Asia - the capital of the Republic of  Uzbekistan. The first information about Tashkent as a city settlings is kept in the ancient east chronicles of the II century B.C., in the Chinese sources it's called Yuni; in the inscriptions of 262 years B.C. of Pursian king Shapura I on "Kaabe Zoroastra" the oasis of Tashkent was called Chach. Chach was a crossroads on the way of gold export, precious stones, spices and splendid horses to another towns and states. Today Tashkent, in translation from uzbek standing for "Stone town" is a capital of modern Republic, keeping the evidence of future, the memory of many history events of   Uzbekistan, - one of the biggest industrial center of Central Asia, with the population of over 2 million people.

• Madrassah of Kukeldash (XIV century).,
• Mausoleum of Kaffal-Shashi (XV century).,
• Architectural ensemble of Hazrati (Saint) Imom (XVI century).,
• Madrassah of Abul Kasim (XIX century).,
• Madrassah of Barak-han (XVI century).
• The Mosque of Juma (Friday) (XIX century).,
• The museum of Amir Temur - masterpiece of modern architecture,
• The Square of Amir Temur,
• The Square of Freedom,
• The Square of Friendship of Nations,
• The Monument of Courage,
• The Square of Hasti Imom,
• The Mosque of Tilla Sheyh,
• The Square of Hadra,
• Mausoleum of Sufi Ota.